Ultrafast consensus via predictive mechanisms

Abstract

An important natural phenomenon surfaces that ultrafast consensus can be achieved by introducing predictive mechanisms. By predicting the dynamics of a network several steps ahead and using this information in the consensus protocol, it is shown that, without changing the topology of the network, drastic improvements can be achieved in terms of the speed of convergence towards consensus and of the feasible range of sampling periods, compared with the routine consensus protocol. In natural science, this study provides an evidence for the idea that some predictive mechanisms exist in widely-spread biological swarms, flocks, and schools. From the industrial engineering point of view, inclusion of an efficient predictive mechanism allows for a significant increase in the consensus speed and a reduction of the required communication energy. © 2008 Europhysics Letters Association.